Page 87 of Love in Tune

‘Yes. Yes, we do,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you to think I had a better offer than you. That isn’t what that letter was. It’s a different offer, but I don’t want to ever hear you call anyone better than you again, okay?’ A loose strand of her hair brushed his fingers and he stroked it back behind her ear, and then he just stroked her hair because he couldn’t stop himself.

‘What do you want, Hal?’ she said, and he heard the question she was really asking.Whodo you want, Hal?

‘I don’t know,’ he said, because honesty seemed the only way to get through this. ‘I don’t fucking know. I just know that I can’t think straight until we’re okay again. I shouldn’t have leaned on you yesterday, but I can’t say I’m sorry for what happened because it was the most fucking alive I’ve felt since the accident. Being with you, it just feels …’ Hal stopped, sighed. ‘It just feels simple, Honey. It comes naturally.’

Beneath his fingers, her pulse trembled.

‘Listening to you read that letter from Imogen was like scraping nails down my own eyeballs,’ he said, hating even the memory. ‘What kind of fucked-up prick does that to a woman?’

She sighed. ‘It doesn’t matter. You needed to hear it from someone.’

‘Did I? I don’t even know, but even if I did, then not from you. Anyone but you.’

‘What difference does it really make who you heard it from, Hal? Maybe I was exactly the right person you needed to hear it from, and maybe that was exactly the right time for you to hear it. We’re kind of done, aren’t we? You gave me my orgasm, and now you get your life back. We both win.’

Except winners didn’t cry when they delivered their speech, and Honey’s voice shimmered with tears. And winners didn’t feel like they’d been punched in the heart.

‘We both know you don’t mean that,’ he said, knowing he should take his hand away from her face and cupping her cheek anyway.

‘I don’t think it even matters whether I mean it or not, because the fact is that you’re going to decide to go home in the end. You know it, and I know it. There are wedding invitations out there being printed with your name on them, and a restaurant waiting to have your name over it. Your life’s out there, waiting for you to step back into it.’

She was right. It would never be the same, but he could try to pick up the pieces and put them back together again into a similar but slightly altered picture. How had he gone from being certain that his future held no romance to being someone’s lover and practically another woman’s fiancée?

‘I don’t know if I want that life again,’ he said.

‘Well, only you can decide, Hal.’ She sounded tired. Unravelled.

‘What do you think I should do?’ he asked, even though he knew he had no right to.

He felt her shrug and breathe out shakily.

‘Whatever you can’t not do, I guess.’

It was a typically Honey kind of answer.

‘I need to get back outside,’ she said eventually, and he felt her hot tears run between his fingers on her cheek.

‘Whatever happens next, I honestly didn’t mean to hurt you,’ he said, breathing in her scent, resisting the crazy, desperate urge to kiss her better.

She laughed softly, shook her head. ‘Let’s just call it collateral damage.’

He made his way to the back door after Honey had left the kitchen, and stood there on the step for a few minutes to feel the warmth of the sun on his crawling skin. How much more collateral fucking damage was his accident going to cause before it was done with him and everyone around him?

Skinny Steve bounded back into the kitchen a few minutes later to refill his thermos with more soup.

‘This is going down a bomb out there,’ he said gleefully. ‘We’re going to need to make more.’

‘Yeah. Honey was in here just now and said as much.’

‘Honey was here?’ Disappointment rang clear through Steve’s voice, and the penny dropped. Steve had a crush on Honey. He was certain that Honey had no clue. She was totally guileless when it came to understanding the effect she had.

Steve was quiet as he assembled the vegetables for the soup on the bench for Hal to start work on. As they chopped onions side by side, he paused.

‘Did you ever see pictures of Marilyn Monroe, Hal? You know, before your accident, like?’

Hal nodded, aware from Steve’s voice that he was being taken into his confidence.

‘Sure I did.’

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